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grcumb writes "Looks like the folks at Google have made good on their promise to release the Android 4.0 source code. Android software engineer Jean-Baptiste Queru writes: 'Hi! We just released a bit of code we thought this group might be interested in. Over at our Android Open-Source Project git servers, the source code for Android version 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) is now available. ... This is actually the source code for version 4.0.1 of Android, which is the specific version that will ship on the Galaxy Nexus, the first Android 4.0 device. In the source tree, you will find a device build target named "full_maguro" that you can use to build a system image for Galaxy Nexus. Build configurations for other devices will come later.' "
Once nice side-effect of this is that the revision history for the non-free Honeycomb series is also available, albeit without any release tags.

They were never evil. They're not MS/Apple. Do you have a short term memory loss? Honeycomb was withheld, and they told people why [gizmodo.com].

They said basically honeycomb was a bad implementation, they didn't want people to move forward with it, they do want people to move forward on ICS. It's not like a "honeycomb is a goddamn secret!" This has been announced like 500x. It's like a design for a car that they say "this design causes engines to explode" so they don't release the design. Is this a surprise that they then release ICS source? Did you hear them say "ICS is a bad implementation"? No.

That's not a lack of transparency either, they announced [guardian.co.uk] this [zdnet.com] repeatedly [phandroid.com].

[Andy] Rubin says that if Google were to open-source the Honeycomb code now, as it has with other versions of Android at similar periods in their development, it couldn't prevent developers from putting the software on phones "and creating a really bad user experience. We have no idea if it will even work on phones." "Android is an open-source project," he adds. "We have not changed our strategy."

Chris Rock had a routine. He said some—too many of our men, they're proud, they brag about doing things they're supposed to do. They say 'Well, I- I'm not in jail.' Well you're not supposed to be in jail!

Huh? Google was supposed to release source code for Android? Pretty sure that counts as extra.

Of course, by/. standards everyone is supposed to release their source code, so by that standard, yeah Google did what they were supposed to do. On the other hand, anyone who is truly a proponent of freedom should acknowledge that, being Google's project, they are free to do with it as they like. Including not releasing source, if they see fit.

Huh? Google was supposed to release source code for Android? Pretty sure that counts as extra.

When you build off of GPL software you're legally obligated to release the modifications, so yeah, Google releasing a significant portion of Android is not "extra" it is the minimum required by law. That's not to say they did not also release some code they did not strictly have to, but since they had promised to do so, changing their mind at this stage would have been willfully misleading consumers and partners.

When you build off of GPL software you're legally obligated to release the modifications, so yeah, Google releasing a significant portion of Android is not "extra" it is the minimum required by law.

Only if you distribute binaries, which Google never did. Of course, the manufacturers did release binaries, so they did distribute the GPL'ed code from their websites. For example, you could always find Honeycomb's kernel code on the ASUS website [asus.com].

That's not to say they did not also release some code they did not strictly have to, but since they had promised to do so, changing their mind at this stage would have been willfully misleading consumers and partners.

Samsung was still legally the distributor, and they did in fact release the GPLv2 licensed code on their website (search for "D710" on https://opensource.samsung.com/index.jsp [samsung.com], for example).

The point usually made is that this applies to the android kernel source, which has indeed been promptly released directly to the kernel developers (and for download for anyone who cares). Much more promptly, by the way, than required by the licence.

It does *NOT* apply to the full android system, nor will it ever. Android itself (the various subprojects have separate licences, which I think you'll find, are all proprietary).

Just distributing a linux kernel running distribution does *not* make it GPL.

The GPL only applies between two parties (three if you count the copyright holder). When Google distributes the code (source or binary) to Samsung, then they are required to also give a copy of the source to Samsung. If they do this, rather than provide an offer good for three years to provide the source later, then Google has no further GPL-related obligations. If you receive a Samsung device containing GPL'd code supplied to them by Google, then Samsung, not Google, is responsible for providing the sou

That would be why none of Ice Cream Sandwich other than the kernel is under the GPL. They didn't 'build off GPL software', in fact they went to the extreme of writing their own libc in order to avoid that. The 'some code they did not strictly have to' is basically all of Android's userland.

Google did release all of Android Honycomb that was GPL'd. In particular the Kernel, and a few other userland tools. However, everything that makes Andrioid Android, and not just another linux distro is licensed under the Apache license which allows for proprietary modifications. This includes the Dalvik VM, the Harmony Java libraries, and the Android APIs. Google was perfectly with the law to not release this code, not to mention the fact that they wrote half of it themselves.

This has already been discussed ad'nausem on Slashdot, so there is no excuse for this misinformation to be moderated up. I swear only idiots that hardly read the site get moderation points anymore.

There's a tremendous amount of FUD being spread about key competitors. As you've noted, the "Android's not really free/libre" is one of the FUD talking points.

Uh, well, it's not, really. The Apache license (as well as BSD licenses) make no requirement that the source be provided, so they're not really "free software" licenses in the "freedom" sense... They're certainly not opensource licenses since they make no requirement that the source be open. They're basically just free-as-in-beer distribution licenses; you can share the binaries all you want, but you can't really change them, because nobody is obligated to give you the source to go with those binaries.

They're basically just free-as-in-beer distribution licenses; you can share the binaries all you want, but you can't really change them, because nobody is obligated to give you the source to go with those binaries

And how did they create those binaries? By compiling the source code, which was Apache or BSD licensed. The derived work may be proprietary, but the ASL or BSDL code it open.

When you build off of GPL software you're legally obligated to release the modifications, so yeah, Google releasing a significant portion of Android is not "extra" it is the minimum required by law. That's not to say they did not also release some code they did not strictly have to, but since they had promised to do so, changing their mind at this stage would have been willfully misleading consumers and partners.

As a parent, I have learned that while you should not always reward simply "doing what you should", it's very important not to bitch about it when someone does what they should, or what they said they would do.

So, for future reference, the correct response to this announcement of Google releasing the source code to Android 4 is "Good". Saying "Those fuckers, they didn't do it last time" is really not productive in terms of behavior programming.

When you build off of GPL software you're legally obligated to release the modifications, so yeah, Google releasing a significant portion of Android is not "extra" it is the minimum required by law. That's not to say they did not also release some code they did not strictly have to, but since they had promised to do so, changing their mind at this stage would have been willfully misleading consumers and partners.

Only the kernel is GPL and they've been releasing their changes for that all along. The rest of it, all the user land stuff is BSD licenced. So Google can release it as and when they see fit. Or not at all.

My own thoughts are that they withheld 3.0 simply to piss on Amazon's parade and to give their tier 1 partners a honeymoon free from cheaper competing products. It may well be that a lot of the phone functionality was bitrotten / discarded in 3.x in their race to make it work on tablets so there is that

So on Slashdot of 2011, being a company that builds you software based on open source software and open sourcing every part of your software (even the parts you aren't obligated to) gets you no credit. Slashdot really was all about open source back in my day. What the fuck happened during the last few years to make Slashdot such a shit hole of trolls?

There are people on slashdot who see it as their mission to paint Google evil for any reason. If they can misinterpret a license that most people don't understand and thus incorrectly hold it out as Google being evil, that's what they're going to do. It doesn't play very well, if you look around this thread - in fact, they're probably doing their "evil Google" campaign more harm than good trying it here where so many active participants actually know better. They should take their work to PCWorld and CNe

Of course they can do anything they like with their code.Free software advocates do not propose to make it illegal to withhold your own source code. The issue is related to what is best for the customer. Free software advocates feel that free software is better for the customer than software that isn't free. Especially when you are talking about an OS, it is also better for 3rd party software developers to have access to the source code (this much should be obvious to anyone).

Well, my point to bonch, was just saying "Android is open source" carries no specific instructions with it. That is what the various licenses are for. "X is open source because it uses Y license" is a more appropriate statement. Then we can carry on and make sure the project and any other project that forks from that carry out the terms of said license.

"Android" is not one item released under one license. It is made up of a number of components under different licenses with varying openness. Google rel

Well, my point to bonch, was just saying "Android is open source" carries no specific instructions with it.

Fair enough, I would suggest that fundamental component is that the source code is actually released, you can hardly call a project 'open source' if you don't make the source available.

I suppose the other point I should have mentioned is that the statement 'Android is open source' does sort of work in certain circumstances simply because all of the pieces just so happen to align, for example in the context of smartphones it works because the source-code for the kernel (required by license) and userland (o

Yeah, after Google starts bragging about how much more open they are than Apple here's the tweet [twitter.com] they BETTER back it up. For the last year, the latest Android code hasn't been any more open than iOS.

Huh? Google was supposed to release source code for Android? Pretty sure that counts as extra.

Nope, sorry, it's pretty much an obligation considering where Google got most of that code, never mind most of the code that currently earns them billions of dollars. To put it in perspective, think about the large amount of self inflicted damage Google would sustain if it declared today that Android would henceforth be entirely closed like meOS.

Anything: here's my thankyou. Not a really, really big thankyou because some of the posturing that went on in the leadup was just plain annoying. But thankyou all t

Were you really worried that Google wouldn't release Ice Cream Sandwich's source code because they didn't release Honeycomb's? The reasons for holding back HC were openly stated and quite equitable... Could you have imagined the chaos resulting from people trying to hack a tablet-only OS into their smartphone with half the phone functionality, and everything that makes the form factor work, missing completely?

Also: Ice Cream Sandwich practically *is* Honeycomb, but ready for public release due to being suitable for phone AND tablet form factors...

ICS is designed to work nicely on both phones and tablets. Google knew that 2.x was not really ideal for tablets, hence Honeycomb. But forking their own OS was not ideal, either, so ICS now combines the best of both and should provide a great experience on either format.

No. There is no forgiveness for past deemed transgressions against the Open Source here! KDE is still kursed for using the unfree Qt! Loki porting games to Linux was shit because we don't need that binary-only crap! Wine is stupid because then developers won't need to make Linux-only ports.

Hopefully that means we will see ICS ported to other devices in the near future, it should be interesting to see how it performs on older devices.Good to see that ICS is an open source version of Android after the closed-source Honeycomb created that possibility (however unlikely) of other Android versions following suit.

You must be new here. Google, the epitome of evil and all that is bad and hypocritical, will never release the ICS source, mark my words! *two weeks later* Those bastards released the source two weeks late! Light the torches!

I'm curious: Why did you go with X86? Wouldn't an ARM based system be much more power efficient? Hell, just slapping an Android tablet or one of the larger phones into the dash sounds pretty slick to me...

This is really what most of us care about at this point. Maybe 1% of us will actively use the code personally.

But that 1% matters as they are the device manufacturers.

Cheap Elocity or Archos tablets running ICS on display at your local Tesco's or Best Buy. Hell, I might buy one just for my car, the fact that the $200 tablets were all running 2.2 was the only thing stopping me (lets be honest, on a 7" screen 2.x was crap).

the fact that the $200 tablets were all running 2.2 was the only thing stopping me (lets be honest, on a 7" screen 2.x was crap).

Really? I was willing to stick with 2.3 but bailed out when I found that even the $300 Android tablets had awfully low res screens (lower than my tiny damn phone, in fact), and incredibly unresponsive and massively frustrating touch-screens.

By all means, if you find a $200 Android tablet that's buttery smooth and super-snappy, let us all know. There tends to be a big gulf betwe

Really? I was willing to stick with 2.3 but bailed out when I found that even the $300 Android tablets had awfully low res screens (lower than my tiny damn phone, in fact), and incredibly unresponsive and massively frustrating touch-screens.

I guess you didn't see the Archos range.

Or the other tablets that came out, even the Samsung Galaxy Tab (original 7" version) was around $200 at one stage.

All of these have capacitive touchscreens and 1 GHz processors. More then capable, but 2.x really wasn't bui

Yes I did. In fact my rant about low-res screens and crappy unresponsive touchscreens is directed SQUARELY AT ARCHOS.

"Capacitive" isn't a magic keyword that makes it not-suck. The cheap ones are still a nightmare to use, and since that's the sole form of input, the whole device becomes worthless.

That wasn't the only issue, btw. Other big issues were the lack of a compas, lack of GPS, inability to charge, AT ALL from USB, a power socket DIRECTLY next to the headphone jack, a power plug exactly the same size as a headphone jack (see where we're going, here?) super-slick case and absolutely no ergonomics making it impossible to hold, being much heavier than comparable devices.

I consider Archos tablets the canonical example of crap that I wouldn't use if they were giving it away, and here you're trumpeting them as first-class devices.

Just like Google promised, they were quite open about why they didnt release the Honeycomb source...and no it isn't for Honeycomb - The history is there, but the tags aren't. Add tags to match the released devices globally, and all would be well.

It's nice that a large company actually adheres to its word.It's easy to do it when you're opaque.

Just like Google promised, they were quite open about why they didnt release the Honeycomb source...and no it isn't for Honeycomb - The history is there, but the tags aren't. Add tags to match the released devices globally, and all would be well.

I wondered how the slashbots would spin this to make Google evil when they released the source. But I really thought they'd come up with something better than "oh noes, sum tagz is missing!"

Do you even know what tags are? Dude, you've got complete revision history, complete with developers' comments of every change... read 'em and figure out what version you want to grab out of there. It's not like there's any One True Honeycomb version either. There were multiple releases, which in turn were almost c

The difference being that Android is Google's project and KHTML is KDE's, with Apple splitting up and making a competing fork with little chance of putting their changes back in the parent tree and Google not doing that. Not really all that funny.

The difference being that Android is Google's project and KHTML is KDE's...

Bad comparison. The majority of Android was not developed by Google or Android before being acquired. Dalvik is the main from-scratch component, then there is the (fairly mundane) window manager, and most of the rest was assembling components.

Well, for starters, Apple used to release all their intrusive changes to KHTML as a single patch, which made it impossible to discern what had changed and therefore "impossible" to integrate back upstream. Google has released the repository itself, with proper change history, of all the code they have been working on. That's quite a big difference, so stop spreading FUD.

If you're trying to claim that Apple is as good an open-source citizen as Redhat, then you are drinking some particularly strong kool aid. It sounds good, and I'd be interested in trying some for myself. Wherecan I get it?

Just in case you're merely mistaken, RedHat send an awful lot of stuff upstream, and they always have done. In fact, they don't just send stuff upstream, they employ quite a number of the kernel developers/maintainers full time who do nothing but hack publicly on the entirely open-source kernel.

Funny, when Apple released source code in this manner (big chunks all at once) the open source community was up in arms, claiming they weren't being good open-source citizens.

I actually don't remember anyone significant in the OSS community being up in arms. There were a lot of people on Slashdot, but I'm not really convinced that's the same thing.

Remember when KHTML folks were ranting about Apple's handling of WebKit?

No. I remember when one of the KHTML developers made a comment saying they wished Apple would make things easier to backport into KHTML. I further remember them politely e-mailing the Apple devs about it and then the KHTML team making numerous comments about how nice it was that Apple went out of their way to help even though a lot of the changes were in a direction the KHTML team was not really interested in emulating. I further remember people who weren't KHTML developers ranting loudly and at length in numerous forums and here on Slashdot about how "evil" Apple was and repeatedly making uninformed comments that bordered on libel. Apparently the impression that left still lingers.

Unless Android development opens up, this is more of a "shared source" model than a real "open source" one.

Not really. Until Google distributes the software they are not obligated to share any code and if they feel that the time to market advantage of keeping the code secret until they ship is important, well that's a perfectly reasonable strategy that has been quite common in OSS for a long time. It is a trade off because it discourages some players from contributing to the same project and can limit adoption by some vendors.

Unless Android development opens up, this is more of a "shared source" model than a real "open source" one.

This comes up every single time. The core Android source code (ie. not including third-party drivers, etc.) is most definitely open source, released under OSI-approved open source licenses. Android *development* is not all that open, as it's all done in-house at Google. This is a different thing than the source being open or not.

Other open source software may use a more open development model, but even then it's still up to the actual core developers what they include or not. If I want to hack up the Firefo

Funny, when Apple released source code in this manner (big chunks all at once) the open source community was up in arms, claiming they weren't being good open-source citizens.

That's complete crap. Slashdot quoted the KHTML devs OUT OF CONTEXT at the time implying that, but it was false at the time and it's still false. And the majority of responses to the Slashdot article took Apple's "side" in the non-existent war.

The KHTML people kept being bugged by users asking when Apple's changes would be integrat

"To make our schedule to ship the tablet, we made some design tradeoffs," says Andy Rubin, vice-president for engineering at Google and head of its Android group. "We didn't want to think about what it would take for the same software to run on phones. It would have required a lot of additional resources and extended our schedule beyond what we thought was reasonable. So we took a shortcut."

Rubin says that if Google were to open-source the Honeycomb code now, as it has with other versions of Android at similar periods in their development, it couldn't prevent developers from putting the software on phones "and creating a really bad user experience. We have no idea if it will even work on phones."

That, and to temporarily give higher-end tablets with better hardware a fighting chance against the onslaught of underpowered K-mart-bound tablets from China with 10" 480x800 displays and 200MHz CPUs. Google wasn't terribly picky about whom they allowed to have access to Honeycomb, as long as your hardware met their minimum spec. It wasn't ideal, but it was the only way to give tablets like the Xoom, Transformer, and Galaxy Tab a fighting chance to break out of the 480x800 ghetto and give us hardware that wouldn't have iPad owners laughing at us.

GitHub provides a friendly interface to view the source without having to use the repo tool and downloading the whole thing, so I'm eagerly waiting for this to get pushed there as well. Shouldn't take long.

Who could downmod the parent poster in light of a sig like "Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight." This food motif, revelation and submitter's temp prestige should have some more value, seeing how we all wanted to discuss Ice Cream Sandwiches anyway.

So Ice Cream Sandwich is designed to be compatible with both phones and tablets. Do you have set a specific flag when you build the code depending on what kind of device you want to put it on? Or is it relatively device agnostic? Can it determine the screen size by querying the hardware and figure out what to do automagically on its own?

Yeah I commented on an earlier article about how much better off we are with Google and Android. I got weirdest set of hate comments. People hate getting their prejudices refuted. It causes massive cognitive dissonance and is physically painful. I have my own and have observed the effect on me.

Google are:- releasing source code to their operating system for free, under no obligation. The Nook Tablet and Color and Kindle Fire are great examples of how this can work against Google - Android devices that make no payment to Google and do not come with access to Google's Android Marketplace, or Google's proprietary apps.

- been far better at sticking to privacy promises and openness compared to the likes of Facebook

- have entire divisions of their company and features that make no revenue for them (and are not R&D projects in hope of future earnings) but are retained. e.g. Free offline and IMAP/SMTP/POP access to gmail from day one, google docs for personal use (I can open and edit files with no ads anywhere), AOSP, Google chrome/ chromium, google.org

- principled stand on net neutrality

- taking a principled stand and pulling out of China

Somehow Google are still constantly attacked, way more than companies like Apple and Microsoft these days, they deserve some credit. Sure, they are far from the do no evil motto, but these days, doing a lot less evil than other megacorps is still remarkable.

Two great OS's that breath new life into my now ancient but still awesome HTC HD2 or as WP sees it, HD7:) If this thing had a front facing camera I would never want to get rid of it. Gingerbread is getting kinda old now but I find it more "fun" to use than WP7.5 but I find WP7.5 more fun to hack around with and use on a day to day basis. Now if I could just stop it from DESTROYING my battery.

Yeah! "Cupcake", "Eclair", "Ice Cream", what the hell kind of names are those? Sounds more like something from a dinner menu than a release list!

The OSS movement really needs to take a page from the book of professional companies like Microsoft. They know how to give their product versions classy names, like "Mango" [wikipedia.org]. See how much better that is?

No, it has to be a sweet... so it would be Chocolate Coated Bacon... sadly, we would then have to wait for it to wrap right round the alphabet to come back through "C"... they're doing it in alphabetical order if you hadn't noticed...

How about this for rationale: Its their code and they dont owe you a darn thing.

Seriously, someone comes out with a new semi-revolutionary embedded device OS (revolutionary in that it took the market by storm and is reasonably open / easy to root), and then they release the source for the first several releases. But when they miss one, people act like theyre OWED something. You know what? Go use one of the OTHER open-source phone OSes if you feel so strongly about it.

Seriously, this sense of entitlement bugs the heck out of me. The world doesnt owe you a thing.

I can almost guarantee that there are at least a half-dozen guys who won't be going to bed tonight just so they can post a semi-working bootable ICS distro for Xoom before dawn breaks over western Europe (and earn bragging rights over their peers with Transformers, A500s, Galaxy Tabs, and Thrives). A version you're likely to regard as stable will probably take a week or two. Moto's official build will probably get released to a yawn 3 months from now, long after everyone who passionately cares about ICS has